Damage caused by heavy rains in Marget, KZN. Photo: Dep of Cogta.
At least five people have been confirmed dead with various property owners facing financial drain following the recent heavy rainfall in the south coast of KwaZulu Natal on the past weekend.
The comes after the South African Weather Service had issued a level 5 warning of downpours.
The first person is said to have fallen from the roof attempting to stop the floods entering where they were. One person was struck by lightning while three occupants died when the vehicle they were travelling in ravaged into the river after being swept away by the flooding.
One occupant from the vehicle is believed to be a doctor in one of the local hospitals. Sending condolences, MEC Bongi Sithole-Moloi says their names are not of public disclose as families were yet to identify the bodies, “we are sympathetic and also sending condolences to their families of those that we have lost in these flood, five people, three people have been identified, the doctor that was identified this morning with the two occupants in his car, we really send our condolences, we don’t want to give the names now because we are still wanting them to identify, and we must be sure that those are the names of the people”, said Sithole-Moloi.
The residence owners in the area also suffered tremendous property damage that has been of substantial knock of financial loss. Local pastor, Werner Olivier still shows optimism despite taking a knock after his church was also destroyed, “ we basically lost everything, we reckon its round about one point five, one point eight million that we’ve calculated so far… but we are in good spirit and good hope, we trust the God that we serve and he has never let us down and Jesus won’t let us down now”, said Olivier.
Cooperation Governance and Traditional Affairs’ spokesperson, Sibongile Mngadi says the KZN disaster management is still in the process of assessing the damage that has been done to estimate the clean-up operation cost, “well, as of yesterday, we could not quantify the extent of damage in terms of the monitory value… we have also reported the issue to the national disaster management center”, said Mngadi.
The South African Weather Service has issued another 80% warning of possible rain in the area.
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